Hospice meeting being held Feb. 11

How would you like you and your loved ones to be cared for at the end of life? How do we make our community the best possible place to live when our families are challenged with advancing illness or bereavement?

Cowichan Valley Hospice is hoping the community will help answer these questions. To do this, it is leading a community consultation on end-of-life care, through a series of public meetings and a survey that will be available online and distributed in public locations.

Local residents are invited to participate in a conversation about end-of-life care experiences and a vision for the future of hospice palliative care in Cowichan.

“Good hospice palliative care is whole person care,” Cowichan Valley Hospice states in a press release. “It is based on a plan for care defined by the dying person in the context of their whole life, including physical comfort, relations with family and friends, concerns about meaning and existence. The care team may include family and friends, general practice and palliative physicians, nurses, home care workers and counsellors and volunteers who offer emotional and spiritual support. Hospice palliative care includes care for the bereaved.”

As Cowichan Valley Hospice describes it, hospice palliative care is an approach to care, not a place. We need choices for where people will be cared for at the end of their lives, and those choices that are very limited in the Cowichan region, according to Cowichan Valley Hospice.

“I hope that as many residents as possible will participate in these discussions and survey opportunities so that all of us together are able to develop the end-of-life care that our community needs now and into the future,” MaryAnn Deacon, chair of the Cowichan Valley Hospice Board, said in the release.

A community meeting will be held Wednesday, Feb. 11 at the Ladysmith Eagles Hall from 6:30-9 p.m. Meetings will also take place Feb. 10 in Lake Cowichan, Feb. 16 in Duncan and Feb. 17 in Shawnigan Lake.

Anyone who is unable to make the meeting but would still like to participate can contact Cowichan Valley Hospice at events.cvhs@shaw.ca. The online survey will be available soon.